WoinP - I was teasing, as the reaction of some others here to what I wrote shows, I think. I am deeply sorry if you felt insulted by anything I said, and apologise. Not only is your english excellent [much better than my french is ever likely to be] but of course your french and knowledge of France is sans pareil and only an idiot would think otherwise.

As for what Flanner said - please ignore him. He's a bit like a snake - the more you prod, the more he spits. In fact what I think must have been Flanner's most inflammatory post was removed so I haven't read it - just your reaction.

Pax?

I thought you had gone to the dark side of the force.
I just needed a cyberhug and you just gave it.
Life can start again.

It's not uncommon, especially in hotels to have petits fours or little biscuits when you have coffee after dinner. If the OP is really a teenager, I wonder what he makes of this thread.

Woin, you made Flanner side with the Americans!

That's really a remarkable achievement.

It's quite funny that an Englishman attempts to lecture someone whose native language is French on French language.

He probably refers to this example on the Wiktionnaire:

Les entrées venaient de paraître : des poulardes à la maréchale, des filets de sole sauce ravigote et des escalopes de foie gras. — (Émile Zola, Nana, 1881)

His first mistake was not to read (or understand) the explaning sentence ("Mets qui se sert au commencement du repas."). His second mistake was not to understand that in a proper French menu chicken, fish and goose liver are in fact among the first courses with a main dish to follow.

I have been reading quite a few trip reports where Americans were confused by the French word entrée which they use in their home country in a wrong way. They also use the word "Martini" in a wrong way - it is a brand of Vermouth - and I have read trip reports from Americans who could not understand that they were served a glass of vermouth when they ordered Martini in Europe (the proper expression would be "Martini cocktail").

So, travelling Americans would avoid misunderstandings and would live easier if they stopped using expressions from foreign languages in wrong ways.

But Americans are not the only ones doing that. Every language has loanwords, and they are often used incorrectly.

Maybe the most ridiculous ones are my fellow Germans who say "public viewing" when they watch a soccer game on a large screen which had been erected in a public space.

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

I often need an Italian to translate words imported from my native language into theirs. Here are a few of the things I've learned.

box = garage
golf = a sweater
night = a club
smoking = a tuxedo
mister = a sports club manager
manager = a CEO
slip = underpants

As you can see, Italians have the habit of taking the adjective of of an adjective-noun combination and using it as a noun. ("Golf" comes from "golf sweater".) That's because in Italian the adjective comes after the noun. Recently I heard a mother say that her exchange-student daughter visited the Empire when she was in New York.

I've been told that "smoking" means a tuxedo also in French, which is probably even more wrong than the American use of entrée, because the thing called a "smoking" isn't even a smoking jacket.

I've also been told that "box" and "slip" have meanings in the UK similar to the Italian, but the Cambridge dictionary doesn't verify that.

We do say smoking. Like the habitual outfit of James Bond. But it refers to the whole suit not just the jacket.
I have one at home. Belonged to my father. Who bought it in the 60's when he was weighing half what I do.

Slip is also used and boxers are larger slips - like Bermudas.
Brassiere is not used in French anymore.
And we start saying sockettes for small socks.

Fioul in French is a direct translation of fuel.
And beefsteak became in some places biftek and some say biftek de cheval - beefsteak of horse...

A pull is a pullover. T-shirts.
Sweaters are called sweeters. I guess we refined their use.
Germans use pissoire borrowed from French a word that would have everybody run away.

Flip flops are tongs (slaches in Belgium).

Coming from Arabic we have
bled for a remote area
Kif kif means 'the same' derived from half-half I think

Zakouski can replace hors d oeuvre.
More if I think of them.
We say jerrycans - coming from German recipient during WW2.

We imported a lot from IT.
Email, file, forward, delete have supplanted the French words.
Tu peux deleter Le fichier que je t'ai forwarde hier. Is perfectly normal.

I've also been told that "box" and "slip" have meanings in the UK similar to the Italian, but the Cambridge dictionary doesn't verify that.>>

no box or slip in our house, bvl - boxers or boxer shorts and as for a slip, that is what my mum used to wear [and perhaps still does] under a dress, that has a loose bra top and straps - like something worn in a post war Italian movie to denote a lady of a certain class.

<<I thought you had gone to the dark side of the force.
I just needed a cyberhug and you just gave it.
Life can start again>>

phew. WoinP, je suis très contente que nous sommes encours amis cordials. [or is that some sort of cocktail like a martini?]

We've come along way from steak and kidney pud.

<i> And beefsteak became in some places biftek and some say biftek de cheval - beefsteak of horse... </i>

In Italy, a bistecca di maiale is a pork beefsteak.

<i> We imported a lot from IT.
Email, file, forward, delete have supplanted the French words. </i>

In Italy, email can be email, just mail, or posta elettronica. File is universal. Forward usually remains Italian, inoltrare. Delete also is almost always "cancellare". Download can either be English, or scaricare.

Backup, database, server, plotter, scanner, firewall, browser, and driver are almost universally used, and I don't even know of any Italian equivalent. They are almost always used as nouns. The verb form of backup would be "fare un backup". "Download" as a noun is fairly common, but for the verb, "scaricare" would be more usual.

Masterizzare and hackerare are examples of hybrid words, which combine an English word with an Italian ending to make a verb.

bvl - thanks for the lesson in contemporary italian; that's very useful. I will now be able to dazzle the rest of my italian class with my bang up to date IT vocabulary, though if i use too many english words at once, there is always the danger that they will think that I'm just resorting to them because I don't know the proper italian terms, so I'll have to throw in an italian sounding one from time to time; hackerare is perfect. Grazie 1000!

>>Download can either be English, or scaricare<<

If we anglicised "scaricare", that would just about define the feelings one gets watching some downloads take forever....

Quebec uses courriel for email.
A very nice word. That we don't use.

"Box" let's not go there

Ann, to improve my italian I switched my phone over to italian, now makes a lot of noise and I can't do a thing with it :-)

Ann, to improve my italian I switched my phone over to italian, now makes a lot of noise and I can't do a thing with it>>

bravo, bilbo.

Well, I am lost now.

"Well, I am lost now."


Zach, yes me too, this thread seems to have gone a "little" off topic. Perhaps you will be good enough to come back with a report on your Christmas Holiday in England after you return to the U.S.

This thread amuses me greatly.

My only real qualm with English food is with their sausages.

A few months ago I scored some hogget from a farmers market and freeze it. On Saturday a local farm shop had some Welsh salt marsh lamb and I bought some of that. Yesterday I made a big ol' pot of lamb chili. Yes, lamb chili. So tasty.

>>Well, I am lost now.<<

Zach -- haven't you ever had conversations with your family or friends when you started out talking about one thing and it went off on tangents about other things? Sometimes related, sometimes out of left field?

That is how some threads go on Fodors. And some people like to joke around (WoinParis . . . [-X )

And all the talk about different languages, and spats between other Fodorites don't really answer your questions . . . but that happens.

I've resurrected this thread in Zachealy is still around and can tell us what he though of the food over the Christmas holiday, bet it wasn't as bad as what he thought it was going to be.

good thinking, Hooameye.

i think we'd all like to know the answer to that.